Read the store activity log in Shopify
The store activity log is the record of who changed what in your admin. When a price, a product or a permission changes and nobody owns up to it, the log is where you look first. This tutorial opens it and reads one week of entries.
Written · Shopify admin, desktop steps · 6 minutes read
The worked example
| Log path | Settings then General then Store activity log |
| Entries in the example week | 127 |
| Average per day | 18.14 |
| Current log limit | 250 results |
| New log retention | 18 months |
Download the record: activity-log-review.csv (98 bytes).
An activity log record for the worked example week. The seven daily counts sum to 127 entries.
1Open General settings
From your Shopify admin, go to Settings then General.
2Click Store activity log
In the Resources section, click Store activity log. Both store activity logs open from the same place on your Settings page.
3Know which log you have
Check which store activity log you have. The current store activity log is a list of entries that you cannot click or filter. The new store activity log is a table of entries with filters, such as Actor and Date range, and you can click an entry to review its details.
4Check who can see it
Owners and administrators view the new store activity log after it is available to them. Other users view the current store activity log when they have the Home and Store settings then Manage settings store permissions.
5Filter the new log
In the new log, filter by Actor to see one person work, and by Date range to pin down one day. Each entry includes the date of the change, the action taken, the actor that made the change, and the resource that changed.
6Know the limits
The current store activity log shows a maximum of 250 results, and the list goes back only as far as that number of results. The new log keeps entries for 18 months. Entries cannot be exported from the store activity log, and not every action in your admin is recorded.
7Act on what you find
When an entry shows a change you do not recognize, open the user page for the actor and check their roles. Suspend the user if the change looks wrong, and fix the change itself before you move on.
The arithmetic
| Day | Entries | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 18 | 14.17% |
| Tuesday | 24 | 18.90% |
| Wednesday | 31 | 24.41% |
| Thursday | 12 | 9.45% |
| Friday | 27 | 21.26% |
| Saturday | 9 | 7.09% |
| Sunday | 6 | 4.72% |
| Total | 127 | 100.00% |
Average entries per day are 127 divided by 7, which is 18.14. The week used 127 of the 250 results the current log shows, which is 50.8%.
Held at the counter
The log is view-only. The store activity log is view-only. You cannot expand or click the individual events in the current log, and you cannot export the entries from either log, so copy what you need by hand.
The current log goes back only as far as 250 results. A maximum of 250 results can be displayed on the store activity log page, and the list goes back only as far as that number of results. A busy week can push last month off the list entirely.
Not every action is recorded. Not every action in your Shopify admin is recorded in the store activity log, and each type of change is recorded only from the date the new log started to record it. An empty log does not prove nothing changed.
Sources
- Activity logs in the Shopify admin — Shopify's help pages: the two log versions, the access rules, the 250-result limit, the 18-month retention, and the no-export rule.